I commend Norwich’s professor Rowland Brucken for questioning the upcoming June 19 lecture at Norwich University by former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice as noted in the May 4 issue of The Times Argus. It would appear that Norwich University is paying Rice a substantial fee while possibly giving her a platform to “clean up” her legacy of promoting torture and deception.

In addition to Rice’s part in promoting torture, she also assisted in the Bush administration’s propaganda for making war on Iraq, a sovereign nation that neither had a part in the 9/11 attacks nor had weapons of mass destruction. That country continues in a civil war due in part to the sectarian death squad training and equipment provided by the Bush administration under the leadership of Gen. David Petraeus and Col. James Steele.

After a decadelong U.S. occupation of Iraq, some of the largest Western oil companies remain there, including ExxonMobil, BP and Shell.

Also the Bush administration and particularly Rice had a close relationship with Philip Zelikow, who was selected by the Bush administration to control what was and what was not to be included in the official 9/11 Commission report. The 9/11 Commission was supposedly convened to investigate the events of 9/11 and determine who was responsible for the national security failures. It appears that no one was held responsible for multiple security failures.

Two items blatantly missing from that 9/11 Commission report were, first, the omission of New York firefighters’ firsthand reports describing explosions during the collapse of the three WTC high-rise skyscrapers on 9/11. Controlled demolition was later confirmed by evidence in the dust. Secondly, the third skyscraper, a 47-story structural steel high-rise that was also destroyed on the afternoon of 9/11, was never mentioned in the commission’s report. That little-reported 6.5 second free-fall collapse can be viewed at WTC7.net.

After student and faculty protest at Rutgers University, Rice recently decided not to give the commencement address there after all.

Norwich President Richard Schneider commented in the Times Argus article cited above, “Dr. Rice is an example of the type of leader that the university tries to develop in its students.” Really?